


The will to live

by AlGhoul, grand_theft_karma



Series: W.GY (eng) [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Neurodiversity, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlGhoul/pseuds/AlGhoul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/grand_theft_karma/pseuds/grand_theft_karma
Summary: Humungus gave them an order to travel the wasteland for some strategically important object. Pre-canon with some headcanon backstory added. Turns later into an AU where they both have stayed alive.My GY portayal is a neurodivergent jewish boy.Translated from Russian, original is posted separetely / родной русский текст лежит отдельным фиком, линк есть.





	The will to live

**Author's Note:**

> The original russian edition can be found here / линк на русский оригинал - https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198892  
> The fanmix for the fic can be found here - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CPFN6tCxToZfu-2bS1uFHQ0U-D5Balcp  
> (I highly recommend listening to it, there's a song for every part of the text and it's a nice fanmix anyway)  
> Thanks to my beta grand_theft_karma for the patience and good sence of humor.

_“Trust no one with our darkest secrets; tell no one how will we die” – A.Vasiliev “Bonny & Clyde”_

**· · − · − − − · − · − − · · · · · · − · − − ·**

– Why would they send us anyway? – Baby is always annoyed when tired. – Gang has plenty of expendable trackers, why send the best ones! We are, like, top-notch elite!

He usually doesn’t say a word – he knows that pretty back warmers shouldn’t be chatty. But they are alone at the roadside and the route is empty from one horizon to another; there’s no one around to undermine Master’s authority in front of. So he’s complaining.

The problem is – neither of them are able to read the map properly, or read the sky, and all the roads are called differently now, and all the road signs are lying in dust, rusting. It’s time to admit: it’s either they’re hopelessly lost, or there’s no such radio tower at all and the informant was just lying to survive, poor bastard. However, he’s long dead now, so there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Baby is annoyed. Baby pouts and turns away, staring at the air still and blank, floating away from reality. Again. He wraps his heavy neck chain up around his finger, tightens it a little and then unwinds it back. Again, and again, and again. The links clank quietly, with no echo in the thick evening air.

Wez growls in anger but has no idea what to say: moments like this are exactly why he requested this mission from Humungus to begin with; to give the kid some rest so he could stop dissociating every five minutes. Wez knows how uncomfortable his precious jewel is at the camp, with all the noise and the crowd, how he locks up inside his shell again and again. Wez knows – it’s only on the road when baby finally relaxes and starts breathing normally. Wez would bring his baby a thousand of mutilated corpses of his own making if that could possibly help anyone. Unfortunately, corpses are of no help in here and those are the only thing he’s able to produce, so. Well, fuck.

Breathtakingly orange sunset crawls upon the prairie like liquid gold, and disheveled blond mane in the wind shines like a burning fire. Wez, in his late forties, is old enough to remember what a dandelion is. Precious baby Gold hadn’t met those – he’s only nineteen, had lived in the New world for most of his life, hearing only his mother’s tales about the Old one. That’s probably for the best. Yes. It’s for the best.

Wez forgets what he was thinking for a second and stands still just to admire how beautiful his baby is. The crown jewel, the perfect treasure. The trophy.

*****

The wind is still trying to wrest the scruffy old map from Gold’s hands. He’s already willing to allow it, so the damn paper could fly all the way to the desert, if that would mean they’ll never find their way back and be doomed to wander the wasteland together till the end of times. He hates their camp, hates fuckin’ Humungus and his fuckin’ crazy idiots, willing to listen every word of the glorious rando in leather underpants with the rusty bucket on his damn head. Wez is no better, but it’s safe with him. Not with them.

Liquid gold around them is starting to turn to copper, and long edgy shadows from bunches of dry grass get so long they start to stumble on one another, making it look like a motley net in the sand. Wind gets stronger, so Gold allows himself a barely noticeable smile when he removes a strand of hair from his face – he knows that Wez is watching. He likes to look beautiful for the Master, likes to be the best jewel ever.

The copper slowly turns blue and the wind gets chilly. Wherever they are stuck at, they really should make camp and sound a retreat now.

******

It’s really cold in the desert at night, shockingly so, but Gold thinks he’d better freeze to death rather than make a sound. He’s still angry at the old fucker for this stupid mission, this stupid obscure map, for them being lost in the middle of nowhere. He’s angry and nervous, he touches scratchy linen tent surface to calm down. He freezes. Stupid Wasteland, stupid radio signals, stupid trackers. He really likes the silence though. But it’s so damn cold in this blessed silence that he starts shaking and his pride slowly wears off.

– Wez.

Silence still. Wez doesn’t snore, so he’s obviously not asleep and hears him perfectly. Asshole.

– Wez, I’m cold.

Surely, Wez didn’t take any blankets with them. Why would he. It seems like wrapping up in the very tent would be warmer, sleeping under the stars. Wez crawls closer and covers Gold’s body with his – sizzling hot, as usual. Mad blood keeps him from getting colder, be that day or night. Gold starts shaking less and grumpily buries his nose somewhere into Wez’s neck, pressing in, as if almost trying to become smaller and hide from the scares of the world. Unfortunately, without gear Wez is almost the same height and size as Gold; it’s their big secret and nobody’s business.

It gets warmer though.

– I’m sorry, babe – Wez whispers huskily into fluffy hair and holds his treasure tighter.

Gold makes grumpy noises but is no longer angry. He almost starts to drift away finally, but the wind throws waves of sand at their tent making it impossible to sleep with such noise. It’s been a really long time since he’d slept in an actual house with some actual walls, but he’s still not used to all the night sandstorms and whatnot, even after all these years. Wez gently strokes his head, running fingers through his hair; he knows about the problem. He knows all of his problems. And never talks about his own.

*******

Gold knows that Wez had been at war once, when he was younger. Some big old war that was long before any new ones. But Wez speaks just once about it, being really drunk on trophy scotch. Something about napalm in the morning? He never talks about it ever again. Gold doesn’t ask. He’s scared – he really doesn’t wanna know what kind of events have created Wez as he knows him. Their world is crazy enough to have something to compare Wez with – and Gold is totally sure he doesn’t wanna know. Wez is berserk. The marauder. Ferocious dog of war, who lives by the smell of blood and gurgling dying screams. Wasteland created him. People like him have created the Wasteland.

When Gold saw the twisted face of Wez for the first time, while the gang was raiding the caravan he and his mother have been traveling with, he froze in horror to the point of no longer breathing once again. And now – now this Humungus’ watchdog has become his everything. _“Leave your kippah, Abraham. Listen to your mother, go with him – that is a strong man who will be able to protect you”._ – even with her dying breath mother remained an undoubtedly wise woman and had made no mistake. They’re sharing bike, bread and bed for so many months now, Gold had lost count. He’s traded white cotton for black leather, grew and bleached his hair; he is Wez’s most valuable trophy now. There’s a long list of those who’d wanted to steal the treasure and paid with their lives for it. Gold has no idea what to feel for them. So he feels nothing. 

Wez is trying to take care of his treasure at those rare times when the boiling rage leaves his sick mind. It’s rough, and he obviously doesn’t know how to care, but he’s trying. And this awkward alternating attention turns out to be a thousand times better than suffocating awareness of a mother, from which there’s nowhere you can hide. For all the time they’ve been together Gold has had not a single asthma attack, which is honestly priceless in the desert.

********

The wind had calmed down a little by morning, so Gold could catch his four hours of sleep until the sun starts to blind him even through the tent’s thick linen. He wakes up from this light and just lays there for a while, listening to Wez’s snore and staring at the ceiling. There’s some crazy-ass lizard running across the tent, casting sidelong shadow; it doesn’t know yet that it’s going to be their breakfast.

Wez wakes up when Gold’s pulling out stiff arm from underneath him. Wez hates to be woken up, hates morning, hates the sun and a thousand things more, including himself, but his grumpy baby is still the most perfect thing in the world so he couldn’t possibly be angry at him too.

– Boker tov – says Gold, being full aware that Wez can’t stand Hebrew for some reason.

He does that every morning and every morning Wez becomes routinely annoyed, and refuses to answer “good morning” back at him. With that ritual they check the consistency of their world, however mad it may be. The world stands still – good. There’s nothing left, so there’s that. The one good and stable thing.

They are lying half-cuddled, face to face, looking at each other for no other reason than being too lazy to move.

Gold looks at the so-well-known wrinkles on Wez’s sun-burnt and weather-beaten face, following them with his eyes back and forth, well-tried familiar route across the face, again and again. He doesn’t really want the day to start, he’s so tired of what-the-fuck-is-that shitty food, he’s anxious in the face of unknown. He worries that they will never find their way back; that if they do – they’ll have to actually go that way; scared that when the oil runs out, they’ll have to walk. Of course, Gold is very happy that there’s no engine roar around them right now, and no one is yelling, but that doesn’t make his new day any better. Probably just a little.

Wez looks at his golden baby and thinks that he doesn’t deserve this treasure. He’d done nothing good in his life to deserve it. He worries that someone steals it one day, and on that day his life will end. There’ll be nothing left for him but corpses, a lot of corpses, hundreds of them, with fire and wet red sand mixed with oil. His baby, the crown jewel, the treasure –who is his last anchor for his inflamed mind, something to silence the voices.

– I love you – he whispers at Gold without making a sound. It’s hard for him, those things.

Gold reaches him and runs fingertips across the two-day bristle on the sides of Wez’s mohawk. Scratchy scratch goes pleasantly through his fingers, so Gold does that again and again, drawing some bizarre patterns on the surface of an unshaved head, dissolving himself into that feeling, disappearing from the world.

Crazy-ass lizard is still tapping across the hot sun-drenched tent above their heads and there’s no one else for miles and miles around. Gold realizes that now – in this very second – he is actually and truly happy. 

And that is a scary thing too.

****** ***

When they’ve finally found the goddamn radio tower, the sun has already made its way all across the sky through the zenith and now hangs about halfway to the horizon. Turns out, Wez had been mistaking north for west for two days straight – and these news make Gold unexpectedly cheery for some reason. He just can’t be annoyed anymore, that is too much.

The “tower” is a bit too big of a word for a crooked pile of rusty metal that’s been scavenged from more than once and barely stands. However, the radio shack beneath it is still in place, locked with an equally rusty padlock. Gold notices that they’ve been here, like, three times already. What justifies them is that the shack stands on the high rock and is not really visible from down the road, so they’re not even the first marauders to miss it. He remains silent, for the sake of not being shut the fuck up, but his silence is very intense and particular. Wez haven’t noticed that.

Even though the generator in the backyard starts from the first try, it’s either twisted remains don’t wanna be an antenna anymore, or there’s no one broadcasting left at the whole continent – there’s just white noise on every single channel. The severed head of the shack’s last DJ looks at them with reproach from under the rack. It’s been there since Wez threw the dusty mummified body on the floor to clear the chair. It silently criticizes their every move. Gold is really uncomfortable in its company so he leaves for a backroom to look around.

****** ****

The best spoil they could possibly scavenge at the station turns out to be an actual sofa. One can’t carry it away or take the thing apart; but the value is of a different kind – thin underlay on a bumpy stones bear nothing in comparison to it. For the first time in a year they can have sex on something reasonably soft and comfy. They can do it fully undressed, even. That’s not a chance one should pass.

The couple is taking the whole evening for themselves, fucking the living breath out of each other in every possible position. At some point it becomes obvious: an off-road riding is going to hurt for a while now, for both of them. To fuck without clothes is a delight, touching with every inch of skin, becoming one, not letting go; to squeeze, dig in and bite; to tickle with breath, caress and lick. _“Just don’t stop”._

When Gold sprinkles the last of his cum on the Wez’s chest and falls lifelessly beside him, they’re both already half-mad and breathless. If it were not for the sore body, Gold would gladly agree to a couple rounds more; but his tired dick is not happy with the idea. And neither is Wez. So they lay.

It gets darker and in the midst of the blue twilight there’s that brief moment where Gold suddenly feels like they are normal people in a normal world; but that is such a wild and inappropriate feeling, he drops that thought right off. No, it can’t be. They are not normal, nor are they people. However – however – that unsaid and brief “What if…?” in the air – it still stands.

Wez, who got soft from being properly fucked, is almost ready to agree that it is possible to just stay here and make a life. Gold haven’t asked the question out loud, but he actually does want exactly that. He wants to stay. But they’ve already spoiled the flowery chintz of the sofa, even though no one seems to care, and the success of their mission should be reported, otherwise… well, you know. Even a post-apocalypse can be really mundane in its own twisted way.

But they feel like this narrow small dark room with its old ramshackle sofa and DJ’s beheaded corpse outside the door is the best thing to ever happen to them and the closest thing to normal they could probably ever get.

****** *****

Their nice idyllic evening is being interrupted by the radio noises outside. At that moment they realize – this is it. There’s no simple life for them. Gold feels broken from the inside, like he’s been shot.

Toadie tries to reach them at an agreed channel but the signal is so bad the voice keeps breaking and distorting. They only hear something like “Benzo… barrels… the camp… Storm tomorrow… need help”. Wez understands what he’s talking about – there’s been rumors about some rich-ass guys full of oil for a while now. So, those have been found. The couple could be back by morning, if they decide to leave right now.

Gold feels the sudden wave of terror rushing through his whole body. He doesn’t want to leave, he doesn’t want to storm anyone, he’s just so tired, really-really tired of all this shit. He starts to shake like he’s very cold – again – so he retires to the backroom to put on some clothes, like that could help him. Wez keeps trying to call the camp back, but the channel goes silent in a minute and then stays that way. There’s no signal left.

Gold is absolutely sure that arguing with Wez won’t help – it’s unthinkable and impossible to even suggest that Wez would listen to him. So there’s no escape from the war. There’s gonna be a battle, and they are going right into it. And the duty of back warmer awaits Gold yet again; hold the seat tighter, hold your face, pray – it’s nothing new, but this time he doesn’t have any stamina left for that. But then again, Wez still wouldn’t go into battle without his feathers and just so without the main treasure, it’s just the question of status, the optics of it. So Gold should be worthy of that status. To be good, the proper treasure. He learned that well. But today he just wants to stay alive.

Wez is getting dressed so fast, consumed by the blind battle rage already. He thirsts for good and mighty fight; his eyes go wilder every second. The last chance at salvation slips between Gold’s fingers – it’s now or never. For the first time in your life, just go with it.

– Could we not go right now – Gold speaks really quiet, unable to raise the voice: his good old panic knot has returned into the chest, filling him with signs of asthma, tearing down his breath.

– What? – Wez doesn’t comprehend the question; he thinks he’s just mistaken.

– L-let’s n-not g-go now.

To overcome the fear and make himself repeat the question, Gold had to sacrifice the coherence of it. He wraps the chain up his arm so hard, the skin immediately turns red; he holds to this pain like the only real thing in the world. The pain holds him, keeping him from blackout.

– J-just f-for once. L-let’s just… Not? Please… – he almost whispers with his teeth clenched. It’s so hard.

Wez feels his baby is not okay, really seriously not okay, and he is probably at fault somehow, but there’s no time to stop and think, there’s a battle ahead. Base capture is a serious business. Wez is the best front fighter, his team needs him, Lord Humungus needs him, so all the thinking is for the later, not now. He attaches the crossbow to his arm and storms out the room to the backyard to fetch some spare benzo for the road.

Standing still in the middle of the room, breathing shortly, Gold has only one thing left in his head, beating like a drum inside his skull – _let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go let’s not go_. He has taught himself not to feel anything, be that either before the battle or in the thick of it, he has to not to feel anything. But now his defense has breached, and the sheer panic washes over him. _“Let’s not go. Not today. Of all days – not today. Please. I can’t. I just can’t. Please don’t. We had a good thing going on, why break it. Please. I can’t”._ It’s so damn cold. Freezing.

Gold has no idea how much time had passed. Wez’s hands on his frozen shoulders have broken his stupor; sizzling hot hands, as usual. He wakes up to this feeling with a deep breath.

– Okay, babe, we’re not going. Just this one time, alright?

Gold has to reach the sofa as fast as he can. He does that just in time he’s about to faint from relief. He’s shaken and dizzy, there’s just too much air in the air all of a sudden.

– Thank you.

Wez unbuckles his shoulder pads back, not saying anything. He doesn’t explain shit, but later that night, even asleep, he’s going to look like he’d seen a ghost back at the yard – and Gold won’t ever ask him whose ghost that was.

They will move out only in the morning.

**** *** *

Their morning is filled with clusters of white noise and at times no noise at all. The dead air – and Gold feels like “dead” is very literal. There’s a pillar of black smoke just above the horizon, like there’s been a war. They’re deserters now.

Wez remains grim. They’ve taken course towards the smoke and travel in silence. It’s harder to get lost with a landmark like this, but no one is willing to joke about that. Gold’s afraid that it might be his fault; but he keeps silent, still not asking anything, just holding Wez closer and clenching his teeth. He never could’ve thought Wez would do something like that for him. Not for him, not ever.

They’re rushing across the desert full speed; even though it’s obvious they’re already late. Gold can’t shake the feeling that they’re falling into the abyss – or probably the whole new life – which is probably the same – but in the middle of a fall his hearts skips a beat, like it’s his birthday. The wind in his face. The wind.

**** *** **

There’s no one left. It was not the storm but bloodbath. The trail of wreckage and scraps goes on for miles along the road; they follow the path of inglorious battle through the spree of burnt bodies torn apart; the dead men grin at the smoke clouded sky. The path ends with the crashed car of the Lord Humungus himself – which was unavoidable. Wez dismounts the bike to pay his last respects to the chief.

Gold feels nothing for those white bones sticking out of bloody piles; those people meant nothing for him. But Wez’s scream that tears up the wasteland cuts him deeply, making him look away. He leaves to the other side of the road to walk amongst those who’d sacrificed their lives on the altar of someone else’s ambition.

Well-done meat of their people is mixed with enemies’ one – in the end everyone looks the same. Gold recognizes only some pieces of his old life here and there, lying in the sand. Here’s the belt buckle he knows well – it shined at him every morning, blinding, annoying. Here’s the crushed helmet stolen from one of last years’ victims – Gold still remembers their pleas for mercy – its new owner had suffered same fate now. Here’s barely visible emblem on a burnt car door – it was the same painter who’s made Gold’s first tattoo.

He realizes at this moment, all of a sudden, a scary truth: he is alive. He doesn’t know for sure whether that is because of his Master’s mercy, or because he said “no” for the first time in his life. He knows nothing about that; but it could be his collar in the bloody pile now, beside Wez’s plumage, laying in dust forever. It could be them.

Gold really wants this scary silence to stop, he wants the almost-forever-lost breathing air to stop being so thick and heavy. Everything is too real now. He’s not used to exist so intensely. It’s quite unnerving and unnecessary, and he wants it to stop.

… Wez sits leaning on the flipped over cistern; the thin streak of sand is still flowing from its insides, as a vile joke on those who’d wanted to steal the oil and went to fight for it. He holds the aluminum mask of Humungus – the damn rusty bucket as Gold called it – and doesn’t make a sound now. There’s an all-consuming emptiness on his wet and distant-looking face. Gold thinks for a brief moment that he’s dead too – a disgusting, horrible thought that puts more fear in him than the whole world altogether.

But Wez still breathes; and when he sees Gold – he even relaxes a little, putting the mask aside, but stays still. He keeps sitting there, so Gold kneels near him, reaches for him, barely touching the shoulder.

– Should we go now?

– Where? – Wez shakes his head in sorrow, looking over the ashes of his gang.

– …dunno. Home, I guess.

**** *** ** *

Somewhere at the abandoned radio shack’s backyard, long lost in the Wasteland that had been Australia, there’s a wind that caresses dusty pages of a book. It’s almost faded now, so one can only read the capital “B” and something like “…de” at the end of a name. There’s a pretty girl on the cover, barely visible, who poses proudly at the side of an old Ford V8 with a revolver in her hand.

The ghost, that Wez had seen.

· · − · − − − · − · − − · · · · · · − · − − ·


End file.
